The Doctor Is Dead

Thirty Years Ago
Ever since the Ocean Beach Planning Board has begun recommending how the beach community should grow, they have given fast-food franchises a cold shoulder. Now, however, the antifranchise wall may be cracking: although the planning board turned down a proposed Winchell’s Donut stand in September, the regional coastal commission rejected that recommendation, and the state commission now has refused to hear any appeal from the O.B. board.
— CITY LIGHTS: “MORE GLAZED LOOKS FOR OB,” Jeannette De Wyze, February 2, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
The tangled junction of freeways I-8 and I-15 in Mission Valley is such a mess.... When the new layers of asphalt spaghetti are completed in August of 1984, navigating that stretch of freeway (the busiest in the county with some 200,000 cars passing through daily) will be easier. One of the worst problems — the crisscross merging of cars going from northbound Fairmount Avenue to northbound I-15 and those coming from westbound I-8 to northbound I-15 — will be alleviated by a new series of on-ramps.
— CITY LIGHTS: “WHEN YOU GET THE URGE, MERGE,” Paul Krueger, February 3, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
Such are the conceits of first-world living — they follow you. A late-night call from San Diego slips through a satellite onto the shore of a beleaguered nation with the news of my psychiatrist’s death. My upbringing hadn’t prepared me for this.

“How much was he charging before he died?” I asked the caller, a fellow patient.

“One hundred and fifteen bucks for forty-five minutes,” she says.

“My God…” boomerangs through static. I should feel something, I thought. “My God…”

I had paid him to know me at a time when my “two projects for adulthood” (as Freud outlined them), work and love, were both in disarray. I was reeling from calamity to calamity. A causal chain had led me to his cluttered Pacific Beach office with its moldering terrarium.
— “THE DOCTOR IS DEAD,” Abe Opincar, February 4, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
It’s one day later and I seem to have enough energy for another critique of Duncan Shepherd’s movie review. Today let’s look at his encapsulated review of A River Runs Through It. He describes it as a “gentle snore on the subject of two brothers.…”

The brothers were not boring. I found them interesting because they were active, adventurous in a Hemingway sort of way (remember the waterfall shoot?), and they seemed to have some idea of who they were.
— LETTERS: “DUNCAN FOE IMPLIES SAN DIEGANS ARE YOKELS WHO NEED DOUGHY MOVIE CRITICS TO PANDER TO THEIR SHABBY STANDARDS,” February 4, 1993

Ten Years Ago
Democratic San Diego City Councilwoman Christine Kehoe, who wants to run against Republican Congressman Brian Billbray, is soliciting financial support from the members of arts groups receiving money from city hall. In a letter touting a fund-raising party last week, the Kehoe campaign told would-be supporters that the councilwoman is champion of the National Endowment for the Arts and would as a congresswoman “strongly denounce efforts to censor free speech” — an apparent reference to the campaign of Republican Senator Jesse Helms and others to punish the NEA for funding controversial efforts such as Robert Mapplethorpe exhibits.
— CITY LIGHTS: “LEFT VS. RIGHT,” Matt Potter, February 5, 1998

Five Years Ago
The most notable politico missing in action during last week’s Super Bowl buildup was Susan Golding. When she was San Diego mayor, Golding devoted much of her time to serving the needs of Chargers owner Alex Spanos in hopes he would be a key financial backer of her run for the U.S. Senate. But today, done in by the Chargers ticket guarantee she championed for Spanos, Golding is a virtual nonperson.
— CITY LIGHTS: “FALL OF THE MIGHTY,” Matt Potter, January 30, 2003